


it's all part of the fairy tale

by lapish



Category: Would You Rather (2012)
Genre: Bad Decisions, F/M, Forgiveness, Grief/Mourning, Honor, Incest, Mental Instability, Weird Polyamorous Dynamic, a year after i wrote the first dang chapter and still this fandom hasnt beat me to the punch, also there is a, also there's some obvious mental strain on the characters across the board, basically in this fic i humanize the people who don't deserve to be humanize, consider this your blanket warning for that, involving hints of, not a lot but something to look out for there, so i guess we're doing it, this is the fic i thought would be the obvious fix-it to write but here we are, which for some readers may indicate some level of dubcon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2018-11-14 05:39:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11201586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lapish/pseuds/lapish
Summary: Raleigh has taken his own life. Iris is left a broken woman, pleading with the only man she knows who has the means to make it all okay again. Shepard Lambrick didn't come through on his half of the deal, and his character dictates he must make amends. And Julian...Well. Julian.





	1. some part of me is mortal yet

“Sir, you have a visitor.”

Shepard Lambrick inclined his head up just slightly, adjusting his position in his loveseat. He did not lift his eyes from the heavy volume he was perusing.

“Bevans, I think you know that I am not accepting visitors at this time. Under no circumstances.”

Bevans merely lifted his brow. “I think you may want to make an exception-”

“Under  _ no  _ circumstances, Bevans!” At this point, Mr. Lambrick twisted himself to glare back at his butler. “ _ No _ ; determiner, exclamation! Adverb! Meaning: negative! Is it a difficult word for you suddenly, Bevans? Honestly,” he huffed, turning back around to his novel.

Bevans stood a moment, still and calculating. Abruptly, he began taking measured steps towards his employer as he spoke, “They really are a… rather distinguished and honored persona, sir. Your visitor, I mean.”

“Who is he, then?” Mr. Lambrick asked in his naturally curious way, turning a page in his novel so as to appear disinterested, before shaking his head exaggeratedly. “No, no, actually,  _ don’t  _ tell me. I don’t care. If they’re really so important, have Julian take care of them. I’m busy.”

If Bevans thought that munching on toast and jam while reading trashy romance novels at three in the afternoon was frivolous behaviour for a Lambrick, and quite the opposite of ‘busy,’ then he didn’t say anything to reveal such thoughts. Instead, he shrugged, and began walking out of the dining room; the very dining room that he and Mr. Lambrick had played the game in just the night before. Sans plastic and stains, of course. The cleaning staff were nothing if not efficient.

“As you wish, sir. Though she’s very insistent, and I doubt Julian would want to see her very much either at the moment. All things considered, I would think  _ you  _ wouldn’t want Julian to see her at the moment, but, alas, it is not my place to question.”

Mr. Lambrick slammed the pages of his book together, twisting once more from his seat at the foot of the table to face Bevans once more. 

“ _ She _ ?”

 

 

The first things Mr. Lambrick heard, before even entering the foyer, were horribly ragged screams of anguish. Utterly delightful on game night, of  _ course _ , but terrible for the slight hangover he’d been nursing over toast just a few minutes previous. Totally destroyed the ambiance of his holiday property, if you asked him.

Steadying himself for a grand entrance, he straightened out the lapels of his robe — under which he’d thrown on some silk pajamas, as he expected this visit to be rather short indeed —and pushed open the door from the corridor to the foyer, and his waiting guest.

He was only mildly surprised at the sight he found before him. Sebastian, he noted, stood resolutely by the front doors, staring ahead at the opposite wall. On the floor, roughly five feet from the doors, lay Iris herself, his winner. His  _ champion _ .

She was crumpled in on herself in a way that did not befit that of a victor, Mr. Lambrick thought, absolutely undignified. She was wearing what appeared to be dark sweatpants and a wrinkled, stretched-out, grey T-shirt. The most annoying part, in Mr. Lambrick’s opinion, though, was the way she just kept crying out. Loudly. 

“Really, dear, are we back to this? You seemed on your way to coming to terms with the win when you left this morning. Don’t tell me, having second thoughts, are we?” Mr. Lambrick shuffled over to where she lay in his fuzzy house slippers, eyes rolling. He knelt beside her, and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“Iris, dear, this really is unbecoming of you. As a lady, and more,” he told her in a lilting voice, somewhere between mocking and sincere. 

Iris only continued in her cries, nails digging like claws into the rug beneath her. Mr. Lambrick couldn’t really make it out very well, but he could swear she was making some attempt at words. Perhaps, ‘rally,’ though whatever she could be referring to, he had no ideas about.

“‘ _ Rally’ _ what, my dear? The troops?” he joked, though in that moment, Iris quelled her sobs long enough to snap her head up and look at him with red-rimmed eyes. In that split-second, Sheperd thought that she didn’t really need the mascara that only ended up running down her cheeks the night before, but then she spoke, albeit with a raw and shaky voice:

“ _ Raleigh _ , Raleigh! Raleigh! M-my—my  _ brother _ , you  _ fuck _ !” The sheer animalistic intensity with which she cursed at him threw Mr. Lambrick for a loop, but only for a moment. Before he could reply, however, she continued, “Bring him back! You said he’d be okay. You-you  _ fucking  _ said-” 

As Iris returned to her bawling, Mr. Lambrick looked quickly up to Bevans, who had come to stand in the doorway. “I don’t believe I ever sent for him?” he asked, more to himself than anyone else, though Bevans nodded in confirmation. 

“That is correct, sir.”

“Fuck you, Bevans!  _ Fuck _ ,” Iris screamed, banging her palms flat against the hard floor beneath her, voice still wet and gravelly. At an unexpected loss for words, Mr. Lambrick looked to Bevans briefly, before once again training his eyes on Iris.

“I’m afraid I must say, I have absolutely no idea what you mean, Iris,” he said to her as her cries died down into tamer sniffles.

“He-he’s dead, you fucking…” Without warning, Iris shifted onto her knees, cradling her stomach with her free hand over mouth, eyes wide. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

With that, she proceeded to vomit a rancid, putrid, foul mixture of blood and stomach acid and so much half-digested rib-eye steak all over the antique carpet—and Mr. Lambrick’s silk pajamas. All was quiet for a moment, then two. Staring down at the quaking woman before him with not a hint of disgust showing on his features, Mr. Lambrick simply tilted his head to the side and motioned his fingers in the universal ‘come-hither’ way.

“Bevans? Could you lend a hand, perhaps?”

 

 

Iris was seated on a plush velvet loveseat in the lounge, staring ahead over the coffee table past Mr. Lambrick, who was himself seated in a plain but comfortable armchair across from her. 

“Dear, could you perhaps start from the beginning?” Mr. Lambrick inquired, and was met with a moment of silence as Iris simply continued to look past him. “I am not so naive as to think everything has gone as planned with our arrangement Iris, but I cannot read minds. If you want me to make amends, you’ll simply have to tell me what’s wrong here.”

Iris swallowed a lump, breath short. “I went home. I checked on him and-” she faltered, voice cracking with wet emotion. “I thought he was asleep, but he…”

Mr. Lambrick raised a curious brow. “He  _ what _ ?”

“Oh, god,” Iris lamented, tears flowing freely once more. “He  _ killed  _ himself—my  _ brother _ . Fuck!”

Mr. Lambrick leaned back in his chair, silent. He couldn’t say he felt any compassion for the girl, per se. It just wasn’t his area of expertise, that. But, seeing her brought so low certainly did strike some unknown, long untouched cord within the man. He propped his chin up on his knuckles, and he began to think. A long moment passed, utterly devoid of anything but the gravity of the broken woman’s broken sobs before him. Then, Shepard Lambrick stood up.

“My dear, please excuse me a moment. I must make some arrangements.”


	2. no honor among thieves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a super short chapter just to prove im not dead. i feel like it may rejuvenate me to just push this out. the next one will be longer, for sure. also you can probably see where im going with this.

Honor was something Shepard Lambrick took very seriously. If one made an agreement, a deal, a promise, then, one had to honor that. His father, and his father before him, and all the Lambrick men since the beginning of time had been nothing if not honorable. Tales were still told in Scotland of the Lambrick clan and their devotion to the concept. He only hoped that one day he could instill these principles in his son.

However, these truths only made it that much more difficult to deal with the reality that this time--this one, wretched time--it seemed that his word had not been enough to stop the ticking hands of Fate’s clock.

Shepard Lambrick had failed to come through on his part of the deal.

The thought appalled him. It was a horrible fissure on his character, on his integrity. It was a slight against the very fabric with which the essence of his beloved Game was woven. Something certainly had to be rectified. Post-haste.

The soft padding of his slippered feet down the hall broke the silence that seemed to stretch ever on. As he passed a door, locked and bolted, he imagined a piano that sat unused and surely dusty in the darkness.

Finally, he reached the end of the corridor, entering a large study. The walls were lined with ornate bookcases, and the bookcases were lined with eclectic volumes of all sorts. Near the far wall was a dark wooden desk, simple, though it gave off a powerful aura. Mr. Lambrick approached the desk, sat in a cushioned velvet chair behind it, and reached underneath, pulling out a small sleek laptop. After booting the machine up, he began to type.

Shortly thereafter, Julian Lambrick shattered the glass door on the back patio when he threw his Macbook into it.

**Author's Note:**

> please, leave me your comments and reviews! i'm very eager to hear everyone's thoughts on this!


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